Blogger Raif Badawi, convicted of "offenses to Islamic precepts" in Saudi Arabia, is to receieve 1,000 lashes starting Jan. 9. The lashing order says Badawi should "be lashed very severely." He is to receive 50 lashes once a week for the first 20 weeks of his 15-year prison term. The piunishment was imposed  for having co-founded a website, "Free Saudi Arabian Liberals" (now offline), and for posts to Facebook and Twitter. His posts criticized and poked fun at Saudi institutions such as the Commission for the Promotion of Goodness and the Prohibition of Vice (the "religious police"), the Saudi Grand Mufti, other Saudi ulema, or religious scholars. Among his offending comments: "My commitment is…to reject any repression in the name of religion…a goal that we will reach in a peaceful and law-abiding way." (Gatestone Institute, The Guardian, Jan. 8)

Opposition and human rights activists in Egypt are bracing for the impacts of a new law "anti-terrorism" decree signed by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi that allows life sentences for such ill-defined crimes as intending to "harm the national interest," "compromise national unity," or "breach security or public peace." Human rights attorney Ragia Omran told the New York Times, "Everyone in civil society is panicking." (Inquisitr, Dec. 27) At the end of 2014, el-Sisi boatsed of having detained nearly 10,000 for "rioting" and "terrorism" over the course of the year. (Daily News Egypt, Dec. 21)

Three were killed in southeastern Turkish town of Cizre Dec. 27 in armed clashes between Islamist militants of the Huda-Par and followers of the Patriotic Revolutionist Youth Movement (YDG-H), an arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The fighting began when Huda-Par adherants attacked homes and encampments of the YDG-H followers. Security forces mobilized tanks, but were barred from reaching the conflict zone by defensive ditches dug by YDG-H members beforehand. In the early 1990s, conflict between the PKK and Huda-Par (also known as Turkish Hezbollah) claimed hundreds of lives. Cizre lies on the Syrian border. (Al Arabiya News, Reuters, Zaman, Dec. 27)

Reports from Syria say at least 45 were killed and up to 175 wounded in government air-raids on rebel-controlled areas of Bab and Qabaseen outisde Aleppo Dec. 26, with the regime again using deadly "barrel bombs"—steel drums full of shrapnel and explosives. Syrian state media said it repulsed "terror attacks," hitting jiihadists—but giving no details of civilian casualties. Government forces also intensified their attack on opposition-controlled areas of Damascus, carrying out more than 85 air-strikes on several points in the Ghouta suburb over the last four days. (ANA Press, Dec. 27; Euronews, Dec. 26)

At an event held in Sweden, the Kurdish mayor of the eastern Turkish city of Mardin, Ahmet Türk, apologized to the Armenians, Assyrians and Yazidis for the fact that some Kurdish ashirets (clans) had been accomplices during the Genocide of 1915. "Unfortunately, the Kurds, who implemented and executed the government's decision taken in 1914-15, were overtly used under the name of Islam," Türk said. "We now feel the bitterness about the participation of our fathers and forefathers in those massacres as their children and grandchildren... We ask the Armenians and the Assyrians and our Yezidi brothers to forgive us." (ArmenPress, Dec. 16) Türk was party chair of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which was banned in 2009 for alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

At least 141, including 132 children, were killed in an attack by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants on an army-run school in Peshawar Dec. 16. Almost 250 are reported wounded in the assault on the Army Public School and College, many of them very seriously. The six attackers, all wearing suicide vests, are said to be dead. The students at the school are the children of army soliders, and the TTP said in a statement the attack  "in retaliation against" the military’s ongoing Operation Zarb-e-Azb agianst Taliban strongholds in North Waziristan. A TTP spokesman told reporters by phone: "Our suicide bombers have entered the school, they have instructions not to harm the children, but to target the army personnel." But the gunmen went from room to room shooting every student they found, most of them in the head. Even Afghanistan's Taliban issued a statement decrying the attack as "un-Islamic." Pakistan's military immediately retaliated with air-strikes on presumed TTP targets in Khyber Agency. (Al Jazeera, AP, BBC News, AJC, Dawn, Pakistan, Dec. 17)

Egypt's top prosecutor on Dec. 13 referred 439 individuals to a military tribunal for the killing of three police officers last year. The group was composed  of about 139 Islamists from the southern province of Minya and 300 from the Nile Delta province of Beheira. The prosecutor's case was based on the violence last year in response to a dispersal by police of an Islamist sit-in. The prosecutor's case is part of a program that Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi started last year in which the military is to join with police to protect state interests, and anyone involved in attacks against state facilities is to be prosecuted by military tribunals. Human Rights Watch stated that these military tribunals "lack even the shaky due process guarantees provided by regular courts."

Protests held in the Bahraini island city of Sitra Dec. 6 against an agreement signed between the kingdom and Great Britain to establish a new military base in the Persian Gulf state. Bahraini opposition figures, including members of the main Shi'ite party, al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, also expressed outrage over the deal. (Tasnim, Iran, Dec. 7) The base, at Mina Salman Port in Bahrain, will host Royal Navy vessels including destroyers and aircraft carriers. It is to be Britain's first permanent base in the Middle East in over 40 years. UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the new base shows Britain's commitment to a "sustained presence east of Suez"—referring to the wording of a 1968 decision to close bases east of Suez by 1971. (BBC News, Dec. 6)